America learned many things from the recent Cash for Clunker program, yet one of the biggest takeaways should be the lasting impact of today’s technology upon tomorrow’s environment. In a fleet of hundreds of millions, old gas-guzzlers from decades ago still impact today’s world significantly.
Unfortunately, neither upgraded CAFE requirements nor President Obama’s initiative of 1 million plug-in vehicles by 2015 will be able to offset the impact of the many tens of millions of gas-guzzlers that will be produced over the next decade upon America’s future. Consequently, the legacy of these vehicles ensures that America will still be very dependent upon petroleum – mostly foreign – for decades to come.
Felix Kramer, founder of the CalCarsInitiative and long time plug-in hybrid driver and advocate, recently told the LATimes that the only way for the US to make any serious, timely dent in oil consumption requires the retrofitting of existing gas-guzzlers into hybrid vehicles.
Moreover, such vehicles could be further converted to plug-in hybrids as the technology becomes cost-effective.
Quite simply, however, mass plug-in vehicle adoption is at least a couple of decades away. Even then, the legacy effects of 100s of millions of gas-guzzlers will still live on for decades longer.
Whether the answer is hybridization or not, based on the last 30 years of US oil consumption, can America really afford several more decades of foreign oil dependence?
